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Ned Zeman: Gored

According to a videotaped statement released this week on his website, Al Gore wants the world to know that "gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men and women—to make contracts, to have hospital visiting rights, to join together in marriage, and I don't understand why it is considered by some people to be a threat to heterosexual marriage."

Well, as to that last assertion, especially, let's spitball it for a moment. Might that lingering homophobia have something to do with policymakers such as, say, the Clinton-Gore Administration? Despite its relatively progressive bona fides, the Clinton-Gore White House supported both the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which explicitly restricted the term "marriage" to "one man and one woman," and the military's darkly absurd "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.Are we now to believe that, during the short period of time since Gore's famously (and allegedly) failed presidential run, in 2000, Citizen Al suddenly, finally began to see the light? Or, alternatively, could it simply be that Gore believed then what he believes today: that gays deserve the exact same rights and protections as heterosexuals, including the right to legally marry—but simply didn't have the balls to say so?

Given Gore's long record of progressive activism, compared to most of his Democratic contemporaries—the mostly liberal social policies, the naturalism, the Internet thing—I tend to believe the latter. (To be fair, in 2000 Gore did suggest that he would overturn "Don't Ask, Don't Tell.") Yeah, yeah—you pick your battles, fight the fights you can win, realpolitik, blah-blah. And, to be fair, that sort of thing served Bill Clinton pretty well. Because, if nothing else, Clinton won.

I voted for Gore in 2000, and I'd no doubt vote for him again. That being said, I kind of hate his guts right now, especially while he basks in the afterglow of his Nobel Prize (for global-warming activism), his Oscar (for An Inconvenient Truth), and his lucrative business interests (Apple, Google). Actually, I've kind of hated him since the movie came out, in 2006. Loved the cause, hated the movie. Why but for PR would any filmmaker, in the midst of an important and compelling argument on behalf of a huge cause—global warming—digress into sepia-toned agitprop about his all-American childhood?

Now, today, Gore absolutely says all the right things, about everything from the Iraq war to the most arcane public policies. But now, today, he's neither in, nor running for, the White House. And that's the thing. It's easy to speak the truth when you're not running for anything—when there's nothing to be ventured and nothing lost. Had Gore shown even a little mettle in 2000, had his lameness not caused him to lose to the sorriest candidate in a century, it's fair to say that today the world would be completely different. No sinkhole wars, perhaps. No runaway anti-Americanism. No Katrina shame. No impending recession. And, not least, no George W. Bush. It's worth remembering that Bush didn't win that election. Al Gore, Nobel winner, world statesman, lost it.